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Photo: Tal Cohen
Married to a pimp
Sharman Schiffer blows lid on her ex-husband’s cheating and life of crime with publication of Shmel the Rat: The Yiddisher Pimp, a book about her experience
There aren’t many Jewish woman who can admit to having been unknowingly married to a man who ran a prostitution ring.
Sharman Schiffer, one such woman, has recently blown the lid on her ex-husband’s cheating and life of crime with the publication of Shmel the Rat: The Yiddisher Pimp, a book about her experiences.
The mother-of-two from London, a former model and airhostess, met her former husband of six years through a blind date in 1998.
“My first marriage broke down,” she says. “I had two young children, aged five and three, and I had started thinking about trying to meet someone else.”
Affluent lifestyle
But when they met in a coffee shop, she quickly decided he wasn’t her type at all.
“He was 5ft 4ins, balding, bearded, middle aged man but I fell for his charm and his smooth-talking voice.
“He took me out for a coffee and he turned his chair and was staring at a blonde woman all the time. I told him, ‘You’re a very nice man but you’re not my type.”
He took her home and in the next few months besieged her with telephone calls, eventually breaking down her resistance.
Taking three or four holidays a year to places as far-flung as San Francisco and New York as well as Israel and Spain, Schiffer admits to also becoming attracted to his lifestyle — which she now realizes was not funded purely from the proceeds of the video shops he owned.
They married after a ten-year relationship — during which time she had become used to his frequent absences and visits to one of several of his mistresses — but never lived together.
“I should have given him up ages ago but he would say he was sorry and I would always give him another chance.”
Two months after their wedding and while he was in the toilet one day, Schiffer, now 53, answered his mobile phone. It was a prostitute wanting to know her rota for the week.
“It was such a terrible shock,” she says, “But he came clean straight away. He said, ‘Who is going to employ me at my age? It’s easy money.’” And there was plenty of that, she says — “he made 7,300 to 8,750 euros a week. But whatever he touched turned bad.”
Imprisoned
In 2003 he was charged in court with living off immoral earnings and sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment, although he served only eight weeks.
He assured Schiffer, who had stood by him in prison, that he was not going to cheat on her anymore and she believed him. But when she found out he was living with yet another mistress, she finally called time on their marriage.
“Does a leopard change its spots?” she asks. “No. I went out the door and I have never looked back. That’s the end of my life with that horrible, horrible piece of work.
“I was devastated, mentally and physically destitute and it took me a long time to get over it.”
But she is having the last laugh. Her ultimate revenge is to publish the story that she herself would not have believed had she not lived through it.
“I am now dedicated to promoting my story in order to prove to other women, who find themselves in the same situation as I was a few years ago, that there can be a good life after a disastrous relationship,” she explains.
“I was very hurt by my ex husband’s womanizing behavior and want to warn other women of men who cheat on them. There is light at the end of the tunnel.
“You can walk away and I’m living proof of that.”
Article published with permission from the European Jewish Press , a pan-European news agency based in Belgium
